HQST - WTF????

I sent an email to HQST to ask about the Bluetooth and USB connections on my charge controller. I stated they weren’t referenced in the manual but they were there and how do I use them. I received back an asinine reply that said there was no Bluetooth but there was USB. No instruction on how to use it - what it’s for etc.

Thus far the charge controller seems to be doing very well. I set my extraction fans going and it did not throw a wobbly unlike the previous digital controller though having said that, the previous controller didn’t do it consistently. It would let the fans work occasionally.

Today I set the fans going and found the voltages on the HQST meter are out of whack. I need to study that a bit more to see exactly how out of whack and which way they’re out of whack. I have a feeling they read higher than they actually are but I’m not sure by how much. The battery voltage stop I’d set at 13.8v but the battery voltage was 13.5v when I started the fans. It did not seem to have climbed much under the HQST controller.

After 26 minutes I could hear the fans weren’t sounding that great so I stopped the test. I’d left the solar panels switched on during this test. According to the HQST meter I had used precisely 1ah of power while my little blue meter reckons I had used near 2. The amperage used by my two 2.5w fans seems to be 3.75A combined. That’s pretty much what the little blue meter reckons. We’re pretty much agreed on that. It’s just the voltages that are out of whack.

Still, 26 minutes even with the panels switched on does not say an awful lot about a 35ah battery. According to my calculations, 26 minutes times 3.75A is 1.625AH. Now if the HQST meter is rounding down then the 1ah would be correct. If that battery was good I should be getting more than 26 minutes. I should be getting more like (based on 20AH usage) 5 hours and 20 minutes of just the two fans blowing. That’s approximately 12 times as long.

I’ve tried three different charge controllers on that battery. Despite the sky being overcast I’m getting plenty power from my solar panels. I’m going to say that having put a brand spanking new charge controller on that battery that the battery is likely no good. I’ll leave it charging with my HQST controller but I have very much a feeling that I’ll be replacing the battery next. This was a Harbor Freight Thunderbolt Magnum battery. I clocked it at 3.5AH instead of 35AH a week or two back. I’m going to have to say that today I probably clocked it at 2AH.

After just a few minutes with 95W of solar panels on an overcast day the controller reckons that battery which it said was close to 20% full is now 80% full. All I can say about that is that I will never buy another Harbor Freight battery. At $55 after coupons they’re just too darned expensive for something that only lasts a year. It could have been a customer return that had been put back on the shelf but that would make all their batteries suspect.

Having had interesting issues under the bus when I was trying to disconnect the battery a few days ago, I have a different solution. Rather than disconnect the wires from the battery I shall simply clip them and put a connector on them. That way I can simply wire a connector to the replacement battery and simply plug and unplug when needed, just transferring the connector over.

This time, rather than putting an expensive deep cycle battery I’ll put a cheap used lawnmower battery in and see how long that lasts before I kill it. Actually, according to the figures online, it seems a full car battery is 12.65v and one in need of being charged is 12.45v. Quite a narrow range! Having said that, if I can take it down to 12v that’ll give me plenty extra power. The downside is that unlike my AGM, it’s not vibration nor spill proof so it’d have to be mounted somewhere other than behind the back wheel. Perhaps that’s not quite the killer for that idea but a disincentive. Definitely if I had a plug in battery connector (got one ordered) then I could simply put the connector on a lead leading to a battery sitting on the ground if needed.

After about 90 minutes the batteries were recorded as being 100% full by the meter (or should I say battery). At the full 95W coming from the panels, this would work out at 150watt hours or about 10AH. Given that it’s cloudy and the 35AH battery was recorded at 20% (7AH), I find it extremely unlikely that the batteries are genuinely holding 35AH. It would have at full power taken 336 watt hours to fill the battery. That’s over 3 hours of full 100% sun on all panels. That will never happen because of the way the panels are mounted. This lends yet more credence to the Harbor Freight battery being stuffed.

An interesting (and unwelcome) side effect of my latest solar controller is that the meter on my solar panels reads zero volts. This is absolute nonsense since the meter is powered by solar electricity and would be unable to light itself up without power. I put this down to something funky the controller is doing when it had completed charging the battery.

While the battery is charging, the solar voltage is proudly displayed.

As can be seen - the panels are producing plenty voltage. Actually after the charge controller is turned off, the voltage usually rises to 19v or thereabouts.

As many of you know, I have a CDL and drove for a while for a school district. One has been in touch with me about doing more driving. I’m pretty 50/50 over doing more driving for school districts. $15 an hour really isn’t a lot of money. In many states that’s probably little better than minimum wage.  Today sealed it though - if I get a school bus driving contract then they’ll pay for my next driving medical. Those things are about $150.

I can’t say it’s a nastygram but definitely a reminder from the DMV that I need to book a new medical. I must say they’re sending this about 2 months in advance is going to cause a lot of people to completely forget about this. I know mine is due in September. If anybody read it (or if I even mentioned it) I signed up with a school district in June and went to a week of education sessions before working from August until October 2016 as an aide on a special needs bus. From then on I was a driver though I didn’t get my own bus until August of 2017. Then I got transferred from special needs to regular route in February this year. That was when (after a bunch of uncontrollable children that I assessed as a serious danger, I quit - my spotless driving record and no accidents on my conscience are worth far more to me than a pay packet). While I found it great fun to drive a school bus, I really want to do something else not driving related. Perhaps I should pick up programming again?

So, where now? The second watt meter should have arrived yesterday but didn’t. According to the tracking it should arrive tomorrow. It did arrive in Columbia but about 11:30 this morning - after the postman had left. Putting that in the system will tell me exactly how much power I am putting into the charge controller. I think by now though it has been established beyond a reasonable doubt that the battery is worthless. I can go on buying charge controller after charge controller hoping to make the battery work but I think it’s time to face reality that no charge controller changes will alter the fact that I should be getting more than 2AH out of a 35ah battery. That battery is trash. It might even have been trash when I bought it! I could take it to Autozone to get a drop test done on it but I don’t think that’ll change the result.

In terms of programming, 30 years ago I trained as a computer programmer. I never ever could find work as a programmer. Mind, I think the problem was nobody took me to one side and told me that job applications don’t work and that the only way to get a job doing anything was via contacts. Since then every job I’ve done has been through contacts or walking in the door and asking. I have had a go at these online services such as Careerbuilder etc. I’ve never ever had anything worthwhile out of them. In fact I wonder whether they’re just there to get people’s details ready for identity theft and to send spam and junk phonecalls. Looking around, Java seems a pretty strong contender for being worth learning. Perhaps I could get a cheap laptop, put Linux on it and write some Java?

The bus being all but completed. All I need to do is to change out the battery and fix a problem in the console. The rest is touch-up and modification. I’m not happy with the way I mounted my windscreen wiper because it’s at a very slight angle. That could do with being reworked, for example. Or I could just not drive in the rain (my preferred approach).